Karzai Demand on Night Raids Snags US-Afghan Pact

WASHINGTON/KABUL — Nearly a year after the Barack Obama administration began
negotiations with the government of Afghan President Hamid
Karzai on a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014,
both sides confirmed last week that the talks are still hung
up over the Afghan demand that night raids by U.S. Special
Operations Forces (SOF) either be ended or put under Afghan
control.

Karzai has proposed the latter option, with Afghan forces carrying
out most of the raids, but the U.S. military has rejected that
possibility, according to sources at the U.S. Central Command in
Tampa, Fla.

Karzai’s persistence in pressing that demand reflects the widespread
popular anger at night raids, which means that Karzai cannot give in
to the U.S. insistence on continuing them without handing the Taliban
a big advantage in the political-military maneuvering that will
continue during peace talks.

The dilemma for both the United States and Karzai is that the United
States has been planning to leave SOF units and U.S. air power — the
two intensely unpopular elements of U.S.-NATO presence in the country — as the only combat forces in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Karzai gave
no evidence of backing down on his demand regarding night raids and
the closely related issue of U.S. troops taking and holding Afghan
prisoners. Karzai identified the issues involving “Afghan
sovereignty” as “civilian casualties, attacks on Afghan homes, raids
on Afghan homes, taking prisoners and keeping prisoners.”

Karzai warned there could be no “partnership” agreement with the
United States until those issues were resolved.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had confirmed that fact in congressional testimony Tuesday, admitting that U.S. and Afghan
negotiators “still have difficulties” with the issues of night raids
and the transfer of U.S.-run detention facility to the Afghan
government.

Panetta said he was hopeful the two sides would work out a compromise
on those issues in the coming weeks.

In his speech to a loya jirga, or grand assembly of leaders from
around the country, which he convened last November, Karzai said he
would insist on “an end to night raids and to the detention of our
countrymen” by the United States as conditions for a “partnership.”

The jirga, which was generally considered to be packed with
supporters of Karzai, approved those two conditions and called for
U.S. troops who committed crimes to be held accountable in Afghan
courts.

But Karzai has been warned by advisers that he cannot continue to
insist on an end to night raids. He has little hope of surviving
without a continued U.S. military presence and large-scale assistance.
And Panetta suggested last week that the Obama administration wants
to end the U.S. combat role even before 2014, further weakening
Karzai’s bargain hand with Washington.

In interviews with IPS, people close to the Karzai administration
said they had advised Karzai that he must give in to the United States on the
issue.

“We need [the U.S.] support and presence in Afghanistan,” said one
unofficial adviser, “so Karzai should relent on the night-raids
issue.”

Instead of demanding an end to targeted raids, the adviser said,
Karzai should propose that the United States train Afghan forces to carry out
such operations.

In fact, Afghan Interior Minister Bismillah Khan Mohammadi revealed
during a visit to Ghazni province in mid-January that Karzai had
proposed that the United States turn over most targeted raids to
Afghan forces but that U.S. units would be allowed to carry them
out, in cooperation with Afghan forces, in certain “urgent”
circumstances.

But officials at the U.S. Central Command have vetoed ending the
raids or putting them under Afghan control, according to a military
source close to those officials.

“They’re not going to give them up,” the source said. “This is the
last offensive tactic we will have available,” he added, “and the
Taliban have yet to put anything on the table that would justify
giving it up.”

Officials of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the
U.S.-NATO military command in Afghanistan, claim to have responded to
the Karzai government’s concerns by including Afghan units in nearly
all of them. Last December, the spokesman for ISAF, German Brig. Gen.
Carsten Jacobson, said, “Ninety-five percent of all night operations
at this stage are already partnered.”

But Afghan officials complain that the Afghan forces are merely
brought along on raids that are still based completely on U.S.
targeting, planning, and execution. The Afghan troops are not even
told what the target will be before being taken along, the Afghan
officials complain.

If Karzai does finally give in to U.S. insistence on the freedom of
action for SOF units in Afghanistan, Afghans expect the night raids
issue to play a key role in eventual negotiations on ending the war.
One unofficial adviser told IPS that the Taliban will definitely
demand an end to such raids, and he said Karzai might support that
demand in return for the Taliban ending suicide bombings and the planting of
mines and agreeing to renounce al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, popular Afghan anger at U.S. night raids has continued to
grow as the pace of those raids has risen steeply in recent years
and thousands of families still suffer the consequences of long-term
detention because of the raids.

Haji-Niaz Akka, 48, a shopkeeper in Kandahar City, told IPS about a 2
a.m. raid on his home almost eight months ago in which U.S.
forces tied up all four males in the house and took them away. Two of
them were released two days later, but the other two, his nephew and
son-in-law, were taken to Bagram Airfield and remain in detention.

“These night raids violate our customs,” Akka said, expressing a
common Afghan view. “It’s better to be killed than to be searched at
night while sleeping with [one’s] wife and kids. This is absolutely
unacceptable.”

Zahir Jan Ustad, a resident of Kandahar’s Panjwai district, is still
angry about two of his brothers being detained in two separate night
raids in Kandahar City and in Panjwai last September.

“We don’t know why the Americans are disturbing us by night raids,
which we hate,” he told IPS in an interview. “They are coming at
night and searching our women. Our women are our honor, and we
really hate [the United States] for that,” Ustad said.

The Afghan anger at night raids is also a major factor in the
antagonism felt by Afghan army officers and soldiers as well as
police toward foreign troops that has resulted in 40 attacks by
Afghan security personnel on U.S. troops since 2007, three-fourths of
them in the past two years. Nearly 100 U.S. and NATO personnel have
been killed or wounded in such attacks.

A study done for the U.S. military by behavioral scientist Jeffrey
Bordin in late 2010 and early 2011 revealed that night raids and
house searches were mentioned more frequently than any other issue by
Afghan troops as a reason for serious altercations with U.S. forces.

The study, originally unclassified but classified by ISAF in the
latter half of 2011, showed that more than one-third of the groups of
participating Afghan security personnel in 19 locations in three eastern
provinces had recounted instances of serious altercations
with U.S. troops over U.S. night raids and house searches.

The study reported that many Afghan troops and police expressed the
view that U.S. troops, whom they regard as “infidels,” should never
enter an Afghan’s home. Most of the Afghan security personnel
participating in the study expressed the view that any raids on homes
should be led by Afghan police in the presence of local community
leaders.